N. Korea’s Retro Propaganda Calls U.S. Boiled Pumpkin

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rides on a boat, heading for the Wolnae Islet Defense Detachment, North Korea, near the western sea border with South Korea, in this March 11, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and distributed March 12, 2013 by the Korea News Service. Source: KCNA via KNS/AP Photo

April 11 (Bloomberg) -- The former president of South
Korea is a “rat,” Hillary Clinton is a “funny lady” who is
“by no means intelligent” and the U.S. mainland is “similar
to a boiled pumpkin.”

That’s on a good day in North Korea.

If the U.S. starts a nuclear war, the state-controlled
Korean Central News Agency said in an April 8 statement, North
Korea “will set fire to the dens of crimes and bases of
aggression with its powerful and sophisticated nuclear strike
means and completely wipe them out on the earth.”

While the current barrage of threats from the isolated
regime is unusually thunderous, official mouthpieces have
bombarded North Koreans with denunciations of their enemies and
paeans to their leaders since the nation’s founding in 1948.

The latest propaganda outburst, U.S. officials and scholars
say, is intended not only to rally North Koreans behind their
young new leader, Kim Jong-Un, but also to arouse the
international news media and undermine the South Korean economy.

While the North’s threats may lack credibility, and some of
its photos have been exposed as crude fakes, its Stalin-era
propaganda techniques are proving to be surprisingly effective
in this age of instant news, according to Ralph Cossa, president
of the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Honolulu.

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“If your objective is to reassure the domestic population
of your bravery and steadfastness, it’s probably effective,”
Cossa said in a telephone interview. “If your objective is to
get on page one of the New York Times or Bloomberg News, it’s
probably effective. This sort of guarantees them attention. They
believe it puts pressure on South Korea to negotiate on their
terms.”

The threats increased expectations for the first interest-rate cut in South Korea since October. Eleven of 20 economists
forecast the Bank of Korea would reduce borrowing costs to 2.5
percent from 2.75 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey.
The bank kept the rate unchanged.

It’s easy to explain why the media are so quick to amplify
every blast, said John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei
University in Seoul who studies North Korea.

“The vitriolic statements are so quotable, if not
laughable,” he said. For North Koreans, they’re part of
everyday life.

Deeply Rooted

“This is a natural part of their language,” Delury said
in a telephone interview. “It’s kind of in their DNA. It’s
deeply rooted in their history. They still feel they’re fighting
off the whole world to survive.”

Analysts such as Aidan Foster-Carter, honorary senior
research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds
University in the U.K., say they’ve noticed an increase in
vitriol since Kim Jong-Un took power a year ago after the death
of his father, Kim Jong-Il.

While North Korea has for years threatened to turn Seoul,
which is within range of its artillery, into a “sea of fire,”
it more recently has taken aim at the distant U.S.

“The U.S. mainland is similar to a boiled pumpkin,” the
state news agency said, quoting an official of Kim Il-Sung
Military University. “This vast territory will inevitably turn
into a living hell of appalling disasters by the annihilating
strikes to be dealt by the Korean People’s Army.”

No nuclear-armed North Korean missile, though, can reach
Anchorage or Honolulu, never mind Seattle, San Francisco or
Austin, Texas, which found its way onto Kim’s hit list for
reasons that aren’t clear.

Credibility Gap

“Claiming now that they can destroy Washington is new,”
said Cossa. “It’s not credible, but it’s new.”

Credibility has never been a major concern of North Korea’s
propaganda machine, he said.

“They really don’t care how it’s being seen in the rest of
the world,” he said. “My best guess is the people who are
writing it aren’t writing it for us. They’re writing it to show
their allegiance to the dear leader or the dear general.”

The North Korean rhetoric and posters of North Korean
soldiers destroying imperialist powers resemble the propaganda
and tone of the former Soviet Union, said David Satter, a
longtime Russia scholar now with the Hudson Institute in
Washington.

Just as Nikita Khrushchev vowed to “bury” the U.S. in
1956, Kim is trying to prove his mettle as a dictator by issuing
bellicose threats, Satter said in a telephone interview from
Russia.

Gangster Squad

“Like with any group of gangsters, the new guy is very
determined to show how reckless and tough he is,” Satter said.
“It’s consistent with the way Communist leaders of the old
Soviet Union behaved.”

While the Soviet Union stuck to print and television, North
Korea has gone multimedia.

A video uploaded by North Korea’s official website,
Uriminzokkiri, and available on Google Inc.’s YouTube made
headlines in February for suggesting a possible attack on the
U.S.

The piece, shot as a music video, features a young North
Korean man dreaming of flying in a rocket and witnessing the
destruction of what is presumed to be a major American city, as
an instrumental version of the 1980’s pop hit “We Are the
World” serves as a soundtrack.

“In America, I can see black smoke,” the man dreams,
according to a translation of the captions by NK News, a website
that covers North Korea. “It seems like the devil’s nest that
habitually caused wars of invasion and persistence are finally
burning under the flames it itself has ignited.”

Faked Photos

The Korean Central News Agency also has resorted to
doctoring photos to exaggerate the regime’s military prowess.

A photo released by the state agency last month shows
hovercraft storming a beach during a training exercise. The
picture had been altered to paste additional vessels into the
scene, with two of them kicking up an identical fierce spray in
otherwise calm waters. Agence France-Presse later killed the
photo’s distribution, saying an analysis showed unmistakable
signs of manipulation.

Another set of photos that appeared in the official
newspaper of the Korean Workers’ Party show a seated Kim,
surrounded by military advisers, reviewing his “U.S. mainland
strike plan.” A map on the wall behind him shows targets that
include Hawaii, San Diego, Washington and a Texas city that may
be Austin.

Target Austin

Texas Governor Rick Perry used the occasion to promote
Austin. “The individuals in North Korea understand that Austin,
Texas, is now a very important city in America, as do corporate
CEOs and other people who are moving here in record numbers,”
the Republican governor told CBS News.

North Korean propaganda often takes an especially
dismissive view of women who oppose the regime, as in a March 13
attack on the new president of South Korea, Park Geun-Hye,
saying her “swish of skirt” was to blame for rising tensions
on the Korean peninsula.

Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state, got her share
of insults in 2009, after she criticized North Korean missile
launches.

“We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she
likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary
etiquette in the international community,” the state news
agency said in a July 23, 2009, statement. “Sometimes she looks
like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going
shopping.”

Harshest Criticism

While North Korea’s fashion credentials are open to
question, some of its harshest criticism has been saved for
former South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak, whom it frequently
compares to a rat.

North Korea’s dictators, particularly its founder, Kim Il-Sung, grandfather of the current leader, on the other hand,
receive treatment that might make Stalin or Mao Zedong blush.

“Kim Il Sung was an incarnation of internationalism,
possessed of noble personality, great magnanimity and warm
humanity,” according to an April 8 statement.

The news service seemed less certain how to describe the
February visit of former basketball star Dennis Rodman, who sat
with Kim Jong-Un to watch a game. The seven-time National
Basketball Association rebounding champion is known for his
tattoos, piercings and outlandish behavior, such as wearing a
wedding dress to promote his 1996 autobiography.

Offering neither praise nor criticism of Rodman, the agency
said in a statement Feb. 28 that Rodman and his entourage “paid
high tribute to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il before their
statues” and “made an entry in the visitor’s book.”